2012

Electrical Emergency - Updated

March 22, 2012

We have brought on our smallest chiller and our electrical feeder line is holding. At this time we are fully operational, and classes should go on as normal.

Please keep any unnecessary equipment and lights turned off. We need to shed as much electrical demand that we can, and you can help by making a survey of areas you control and turning off any equipment that is not being used.

Our campus suffered an electrical outage early Wednesday (3/21) morning, due to a failure of our primary electrical feed from SWEPCO to our campus. We were able to switch to our alternate electrical feed to get electricity back to the campus. Unfortunately we have since discovered that our alternate feed is failing and it is not a matter of "if" it will fail, but "when" it will fail.

Should the electrical feeder unexpectedly fail, the entire campus will be without power for a minimum of 7 days. The responsibility of replacing the electrical feeder lines rest with the campus and not SWEPCO.

To see if the feeder line will hold we will be turning on our chillers at 1:00 p.m. today (3/22). Our website, email (campus and student), mainframe system, Moodle, etc. will be shut down beginning at 12 noon today to prepare for this test. If the test is successful the systems will be brought back up around 2:00 p.m. today (3/22).

Elevators in all buildings will be shut down at 12:30 p.m. Please make sure that anyone who is dependent upon the use of an elevator relocate to the first floor prior to 12:30 p.m.

If necessary, in the event of a prolonged power failure, classes will continue through e-mail and Moodle, after a delay of approximately 48 hours.